The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) is the federal agency that is responsible for monitoring compliance with, and enforcing, the federal securities laws—and regulating the securities industry, U.S. stock exchanges, and other securities markets in the U.S. In pursuit of this function, the SEC requires public companies to submit, among other things, quarterly and annual reports (as well as other periodic reports), which contain information regarding a public company's financial status, material events related to such company, and other information that is important to current and prospective investors. The SEC publishes these reports in an on-line database known as the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval System (commonly referred to as “EDGAR”). This way, current and prospective investors may quickly and easily access such important information regarding a particular company.
Unfortunately, the preparation of such SEC-mandated reports is cumbersome, time consuming, and expensive for the reporting companies. There are currently various options available for preparing such SEC documentation using electronic systems. However, these systems suffer from many drawbacks. For example, many of these systems do not allow a user to view, and enter the required information, into the numerous fields that comprise SEC reports within a single page. In other words, these currently-available systems do not provide a single, dynamic page that effectively allows the user to enter all relevant and necessary information pertaining to the respective filing, without having to access (click through) multiple pages, tabs or other on-line modules. In addition, many of these systems do not provide immediate, real-time validation (i.e., as data are entered into the respective fields) and notification to the user that the data entered into such forms comply with certain SEC requirements. Accordingly, there continues to be a need for improved systems and methods for electronically preparing and submitting documents to the SEC, in an on-line environment.